Movie review: Zellweger brings Garland to sad but song-filled life in ‘Judy’

Ed Symkus More Content Now

Tuesday

Sep 24, 2019 at 2:01 AM

It all comes down to matters of taste, doesn’t it? After adoring her - and everything else about the film - in “The Wizard of Oz,” I was never much of a fan of Judy Garland. I saw a couple of the musicals, and made it through just one “Andy Hardy” film as well as the overwrought “A Star Is Born.” Not my kinds of movies - or acting. And though she was better known and loved as a vocalist, I (almost) always found her voice kind of irritating, as if she was blaring rather than singing.

Similar circumstances with Renée Zellweger. She never hit the mark for me and her screen performances came across as either overacted or underacted.

But in “Judy,” a sharply focused biopic that zooms in on just a couple of portions of Garland’s short life (she died in 1969 at the age of 47), lightning strikes, and then, uncharacteristically, it strikes again.

Zellweger gives a career-high performance (put your early money down on an Oscar nomination), and even though I’m not heading out to buy any Garland records in the near future, I found myself fascinated with her story.

Television writer Tom Edge and television director Rupert Goold have adapted Peter Quilter’s 2005 stage play “End of the Rainbow” in a way that successfully grabs on to the feel of a small production, but translates it in a quietly powerful way to the screen. It’s the story of the last few months of Garland’s life. Her hardcore fans still love her, and her name recognition is still up there, but there are no more movie offers, and her unreliability as a concert singer - blame it on drugs and booze and, as flashbacks reveal, an unhappiness with the rigors of show business - has resulted in the drying up of live appearances.

At the film’s beginning, in 1969, Garland is at her wit’s end. There had been multiple suicide attempts, she’s between marriages (again), she has two young children - Lorna and Joey - and the by-then adult Liza, she has no place to live, and no money coming in. Her relationship with Sid Luft (an unrecognizable Rufus Sewell), probably her closest ex is, at best, on the rockiest of grounds. But an offer comes in from British impresario Bernard Delfont (Michael Gambon, in a small, thankless role) to do a string of concerts in London which could solve her current money problems and, who knows, maybe jumpstart her faltering career.

Then Zellweger steps inside the self-abused body and emotionally ravaged soul of Garland and she never looks back.

The film makes clear why Garland was considered not just unreliable but also uninsurable as a performer. The script explores the reasons for her erratic behavior as an adult, and dips into well crafted, perfectly placed flashbacks that show how ruthless demands on her as a child actor (played by Darci Shaw) - most of them made with an unflinching businessman’s not-so-subtle cruelty by studio boss Louis B. Mayer (no actor credit, don’t know why) - had lifelong repercussions.

There are hints at Garland’s need to always have a man in her life, and how her choices were not exactly clearly thought out, as in the case, in the film, of her sudden marriage to the flashy, smooth-talking Mickey Deans (Finn Wittrock in a terrific performance), who was 12 years her junior. And there’s the promise of someone to help her get through the numerous minefields of her life in the character of her British assistant Rosalyn Wilder (Jessie Buckley in an excellent, 180-degree turn from her recent role in “Wild Rose”).

But the film works because of Zellweger, who gives her all in both acting and singing. This isn’t an impersonation of Garland, but an impression of her. Zellweger, who has sung onscreen before in “Chicago,” really proves that side of her talent here (some will argue she sings better than Garland in the film’s time period). And on the acting side, she captures the rawness, sadness and lost-little-girl fragility that Garland couldn’t shake. Yet Zellweger’s finest achievement might be the way she gets the odd body movements, the slight twitches, the way Garland carried herself. It’s at those moments that you totally forget you’re watching an actor, and not the real person.

Ed Symkus writes about movies for More Content Now. He can be reached at esymkus@rcn.com.